David Morgan-Mar – Page 153

Out with the old, in with the new

Today I threw out an old cotton jacket that was getting a bit threadbare. I had to cut off the dinosaur buttons that I’d sewn onto the cuffs to replace a missing button some years ago, as I want to keep the buttons.

I bought a new jacket a few weeks ago, but I don’t like throwing away old clothes, so the old one kept hanging around. But today I decided to bite the bullet and toss it. Farewell, old jacket.

I spent today writing and discussing Darths & Droids with friends via online chat. We expanded a lot on General Hux’s character backstory as part of this. We wrote four strips, which is good work for a day – tomorrow I’ll assemble them.

And I took Scully to doggie daycare and picked her up, as it was a very wet and miserable day, so difficult to let her get exercise outside. Instead she got to play with other dogs indoors, which always wears her out. Oh, and I did some boring financial/tax/accounting stuff.

New content today:

US election fatigue

“Politics” is not a tag I expected to use here, but there it is for the first time. Obviously the biggest news of the day across the globe is the US election, and like many people I’ve been trying to keep up with the results and all of the other stuff that’s going on with it. Enough said.

In between I’ve been working on that Irregular Webcomic! batch. I completed assembling the comics and am now in the middle of writing annotations. I won’t finish that until tomorrow, or possible even later, as I’ve done enough to last for at least the rest of this week already, and I have other priorities for the next couple of days.

This morning I had my Primary Ethics class, and we started a new topic on “Appeal to authority”, which is a bit of a misleading title, as the topic is really more about when, if ever, does it make sense to challenge or break rules or laws. The first story was about a girl in wheelchair who moves to a new school and wants to play basketball like she did at her old school. A teacher says she can’t play basketball because she might get hurt, and rules that she’s not allowed to.

The kids were pretty on side with the idea that the teacher was just making up a rule on the spot, and it was a bad rule – although it was understandable why the teacher did it, probably to avoid potential danger and not get into trouble. They said the rule should be challenged, possibly by finding out how the girl played basketball at her old school and talking to the teachers there about it. We’ll develop this topic over the next couple of weeks, and it should be interesting.

And tonight there’s a football game on. I’m going to relax and decompress while I watch the COVID-delayed State of Origin opening game for this year.

New content today:

Getting stuck into that comics batch

That’s pretty much what I did today: Worked on the next batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips.

I started with the photography first thing in the morning after breakfast. That took me up to close to lunch time, when I took a break to go out for a walk and get a tandoori chicken pie for lunch. After lunch I started work on assembling the comics in Photoshop. I’m about halfway through that task.

I did take another break to take Scully to the park for some exercise and play with other dogs. While there I noticed some construction/drilling work being done at two sites in the dog park. The regulars told me that this was the beginning of exploratory drilling for construction of the new Western Harbour Tunnel road project, which was approved just a few weeks ago.

The new harbour tunnel will pass directly below the dog park, and there’ll be construction sites and stuff interfering with the park for the next six years. We may even lose part of the dog park permanently – that’s not clear yet.

The annoying thing is that Sydney’s road infrastructure is being expanded at a rapid rate in a misguided effort to “reduce congestion” – when adding roads merely induces demand to the point where congestion is just as bad as before. All the city planners and traffic planners know this, but the NSW Government keeps building more roads anyway, because the drivers/voters demand it. Ugh.

New content today:

Back to the comics grind

It’s Monday, the day after my weekend trip, and that means back to work – making comics! I had to compete writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! today, in preparation for photographing tomorrow morning.

Apart from that, I did a large grocery shop, since we were out of a lot of things and the shopping list was pretty full.

And I went through some more of the photos from the weekend trip. Here’s that floodwater that stopped us driving further along the road that was cut off:

An artistic shot of the suspension bridge over the creek:

And a pied currawong:

New content today:

Road trip day 3

I’m back home tonight, after a day on the road with my wife and Scully. We left our accommodation Kangaroo Valley this morning, and drove to Bowral in steady rain. We had a nice lunch there, then headed back home, arriving around 5pm. Overall, since leaving home on Friday morning we’ve driven 438 km.

I’ve had time to process a few photos from the the trip, so here they are. First, Kiama Lighthouse:

The ocean pool at Kiama:

What I’m guessing is an unnamed intermittent waterfall (that only appears after heavy rain), spotted on the escarpment of Budderoo National Park, from our drive up Upper Kangaroo Valley:

The road that was flooded, cutting our progress up Upper Kangaroo Valley – you can see from the flood depth marker that the water is more than a metre deep over the road:

A view of some farming country in Upper Kangaroo Valley:

And a view from Cambewarra Lookout, over the Shoalhaven River and the towns of Bomaderry (this side of the river) and Nowra (far side):

New content today:

Road trip day 2

It rained overnight. Heavily… really heavily. And with a lot of thunder too. Fortunately Scully isn’t one of those dogs who freaks out with thunder; she’s very relaxed about it and doesn’t really react at all. But still, it was an interrupted night of sleep with the storm.

Heavy rain continued as we got up and went out to a nearby cafe for breakfast. They had outdoor tables under a verandah, so we managed to stay mostly dry while eating.

The rain slowly eased up a bit, and we did a drive to Upper Kangaroo Valley, which is basically a dead end road, but I wanted to go there to see an old suspension bridge over the river which would make a good photographic subject. We got there just as the rain eased to a halt, so we could walk around and I could get some photos without getting wet. But the road there crossed the river at a causeway and the torrential rain of the last few hours had swollen the river so that the road was now under more than a metre of water! So there was no way we could drive across the river. We continued up the same side of the river for a bit, hoping to reach another interesting spot, but we were again stopped by floodwater over the road.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting drive and the scenery was well worth it. We saw a large waterfall appearing through the clearing mist, falling off the escarpment in the distance, and I got some photos which will hopefully be good.

We had some sandwiches for lunch back in Kangaroo Valley. Then we took another drive in a different direction, to Cambewarra Lookout, which is on top of a nearby mountain and provides an amazing view over the Shoalhaven River valley to the south. The road up there is narrow and winding – there are a lot of very cool roads in this area.

Back in Kangaroo Valley, we had dinner at a Thai restaurant. The afternoon had turned out fine after the morning storms cleared. But apparently there were serious hailstorms back in Sydney today. Hopefully there’s no damage at our place.

Heading out on a road trip

Just a short update today, as I’m on the road with my wife and Scully, taking a long weekend trip. We drove south from Sydney, stopping at Scarborough for morning tea, then at Kiama to have a walk and see the lighthouse and blowhole.

We had lunch in the town of Berry, and then headed inland to Kangaroo Valley, where we’re spending two nights in a nice accommodation. Dinner was actually back in Berry, which is only about 20 minutes drive away, in a nice Italian restaurant.

The drive between Berry and Kangaroo Valley is along a very narrow and winding road that threads up over the intervening mountains and back down again. It passes through dense forest, and is an amazing drive.

I won’t link today’s new comics, because it’s tricky using an iPad and I don’t want to spend too long on this before getting some sleep…

Puppaween!

Scully’s doggie daycare place had a special Halloween party today. (I guess they didn’t want to do it on Saturday – probably because they get a lot fewer customers on weekends.) We haven’t used them for a while, but given this special event, we decided to book her in for the full day experience.

They take photos of the dogs in day care and the activities they do and post them on Instagram. Here are a couple of dogs enjoying pumpkin bobbing!

Pumpkin bobbing dogs

And here’s Scully with a couple of friends:

Scully and friends

She came home at the end of the day dog-tired!

In other events, I had a Standards Australia meeting today, to discuss photography standards with the Australian committee. Mainly in these meetings I report on events and technical discussions from the most recent international meeting – in this case the virtual meeting in September that was supposed to be in Finland. In these meetings we also decide how Australia will vote on various standards drafts that have come up for international ballot for approval.

Finally, my wife and I (and Scully) are leaving Sydney tomorrow on a short road trip, to spend a long weekend away to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I’ll try to do diary entries each day, but if I’m too busy or run out of time, then I’ll report when I get back home.

New content today:

Ethical behaviour

My morning was taken up with my Primary Ethics class first thing, followed by a morning tea with the Ethics coordinator and other Ethics teachers at the school. The coordinator tries to have one of these every school term, so we can catch up and have a chat and swap war stories about our classes. We have a new volunteer teacher starting next week, and he was there, so we were all giving him lots of advice on how to handle the kids.

My class this morning was a lot better behaved than they have been. I’ve let it be known to the kids that I will send them to the front office – after a couple of warnings – for misbehaviour. This has tempered a lot of the most disruptive behaviour, and they’ve started settling down a lot faster after spontaneous discussion breaks out (as it often does). Last week was better than the week before, and today was better still, and we got a lot of good discussion in.

This afternoon I mostly worked on writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic!, as I’ll need to photograph a batch early next week to keep the buffer full.

The weather is still cold and rainy here. Fortunately the forecast for Sunday is okay, as we have a special lunch planned… but more about that later.

New content today:

Cleaning the carpet

Today was dominated by cleaning. I vacuumed the house to get all the loose dust collected, and then I attacked the carpet with a carpet shampooing machine that I’d hired from the local hardware store. I do this about every 6 months to rejuvenate and deep clean the carpet. It comes up nice and fresh, but it’s a few hours of hard work. Although the day was cold again, I was bathed in sweat by the time I’d finished the cleaning.

After returning the carpet cleaner to the hardware store, I treated myself to lunch at a Japanese place near there. And then I took it easy for the afternoon since I was kind of worn out.

New content today: